Corrected views of final stack of flowers at 12 ft work dist

[LVF]

Rik kindly pointed out that I was showing incorrect close-up views of the final flower stack that was photographed at 12 feet working distance. The incorrect views were posted May 17th.

I am going to show the corrected close-up views of this final stack of flowers that was taken with the Nikkor 300mm f/4E PF lens mounted on the Nikon D500 camera. The flowers were 12 feet from the front of the 300mm lens.

Here is a photo of the final stack of flowers:



Here is how I correctly selected close-up views of the final stack of flowers as Rik said it should be done.

I opened the photograph of the final stack in Photoshop CS6. I then selected a 1024px by 1024px piece of the 5625px by 3754px photograph and saved it as a tiff file. I then saved this tiff file for web posting by selecting image>save for web, in Photoshop. I then adjusted the Jpg quality so that the file size was less than 300 Kb as required by this forum.

So the following 3 views are 1024px by 1024px pieces of the original photo, with no re-sizing of the pieces, as I was incorrectly doing in my May 17th post.

Here is the first close-up view of the stack of flowers:



Here is a second view:



Here is a third view:



My conclusions are the same. For a photograph taken 12 feet from the front of the 300mm f/4E PF lens, and 12 feet 8 inches from the D500 camera sensor, that is a sharp photograph!

Thank you Rik for showing me the correct way to show close-ups of a photograph.

Leon

[JohnyM]

It still looks like oil painting to me, rather than photo.

I decided to try something like you did, so i've took sony A6000, tamron 150-600, set it on 150mm, F5,6 , shutter 1/100, ISO100. Working distace set at 12 feet at the end of stack.

No sharpening. Dmap stack.

1024px crop:

[ChrisR]

Leon - something looks odd. Do you have a "style" set in the camera? Try Neutral.


Johnny - I found the crop after a while! Bottom edge, near the left corner.
That's impressive enough. Is the lens as sharp at 600mm? Asking a lot for a reasonably priced lens?

[LVF]

Here are my Nikon D500 camera settings;

File -Raw Nef
Picture Control = neutral
Auto white balance
color space = Adobe RGB
Active D-lighting = off
Long exposure NR = off
High ISO NR = off
Vignette control = off
Auto distortion = off

The flowers were illuminated by an OTT Lamp which gave a white balance near 5000 degrees Kelvin.

I would like to know what it is that looks odd. I would appreciate it if you would describe what you are seeing.

Thank you

Leon

[rjlittlefield]

I would like to know what it is that looks odd. I would appreciate it if you would describe what you are seeing.

Your images look like they are being seen through rippled glass.

Here is a 300% blowup of a part of your image, next to a 300% blowup of a part of JohnyM's image:



The section of your image that I have selected is mostly not even in good focus, but it is almost all covered with fine texture that simply should not be there. The part that I have outlined is particularly glaring. We can see in your 100% version that this section of petal is not nearly in focus, but it's covered with bright/dark patterns that look like caustics on the bottom of a swimming pool.



In contrast, JohnyM's image looks normal. Areas that should be smooth are smooth, and there are no "ripples" around edges.

--Rik

[JohnyM]

Johnny - I found the crop after a while! Bottom edge, near the left corner.
That's impressive enough. Is the lens as sharp at 600mm? Asking a lot for a reasonably priced lens?

That's correct position!

I like shooting long tele lenses, but they are really expensive and heavy. I was lucky enough to buy new one for 600USD. Tamron is (relatively) small, is zooming and is... cheap, so im taking it everywhere and im not babysitting it.
Im using it on APS-C 24mpx body, but i think the lens is sharp at 600, but i have no comparision to other 600mm lenses.
Sample squirrel from 2 days ago @600mm f6,3


I was afraid of f6,3 aperture BUT i've found out that if your subject is filling the frame, DOF is already tiny and im often stopping down to f8. It seems that my sample is sharpest @F7.1, then F8, then F6,3.

Handheld halfmoon @600 f6.3


Sorry for OT.

[ChrisR]

Leon
Yes as Rik pointed out it's what looks something like one of the (mostly useless!) "painterly effects" which low-end cameras have.
Perhaps there's something in the raw converter?

[LVF]

You are looking at a very small area out of a much larger area. When I look a JohnnyM flower edges they are not sharp compared to my very sharp petal edges, except were you are looking.

I do not understand why there cannot be small imperfections in a small area such as where you are looking at, when the rest of photo is, in my view, looking petty good. It could be movement of that little piece of petal or some else.

I am sorry my photos are not perfect. The Nikon D500 camera and the Nikkor 300mm f/4E PF lens are very good and are not the problem. I take great pains to not have vibration of the camera by using live view and a cable release for the shutter, which I fire seconds later after taking my finger off the focus ring,

My guess is that it is Camera Raw CR6 and Photoshop CS6 that is introducing the imperfections which cause your concern. I do no processing in Photoshop. I just used it to save to the web for posting. In Camera Raw I slightly adjust the exposure, contrast, and clarity. Then at 100% view, I sharpen the photo but not to the point were halos appear around the petals. I do not sharpen at 300%.

I cannot explain what you are looking at. It is a mystery to me also.

Will, on to learning Zerene Stacker which is my next post today.

Leon

[JohnyM]

Honestly, i see nothing sharp about them. Can you point the sharp parts that you have in mind, with arrows?

[rjlittlefield]

...compared to my very sharp petal edges, except were you are looking.

I do not understand why there cannot be small imperfections in a small area such as where you are looking at, when the rest of photo is, in my view, looking petty good. It could be movement of that little piece of petal or some else.

The difficulty is that your "very sharp petal edges" are now appearing to quite possibly be artifacts, strongly modified by whatever process is causing the strange textures.

From our standpoint, those things you call "small imperfections" are indicators of some systematic problem that makes it impossible to say much of anything about the actual sharpness.

Check your email, please.

--Rik

[LVF]

Problem solved. Over sharpened.

I did a through examination of the 8 Nef, Dng, and tiff files, that were used to make the stack. I examined the area you pointed out in the above reply, and other areas of the image not reviewed.

That area, and other areas, is not in focus and when I sharpened the image, to what I thought was good for the overall image, it was bad for the out of focus areas.

Looks like, from now on when I sharpen, I have to be careful and view more closely several areas of the image as I raise the sharpening slider, from 0 towards 100, in Camera Raw. I do the sharpening at 100%, however, I will look at the image at higher magnification while I sharpen.

My apologies to all for not seeing my mistake. I have never stacked photos until this past couple of weeks. I now know I have to be more careful with my processing.

Leon

[rjlittlefield]

I'm glad to hear that you found the problem with oversharpening.

However, I have to question the relationship with stacking.

Going clear back to your http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... hp?t=34050 , image #7, a single shot not stacked, I see the same sort of ripply patterns:

.

So, my read is that your attention was so narrowly focused on getting quick transitions at bright/dark edges, that you simply did not notice you were getting strange textures introduced at other places.

If this problem is related to stacking at all, I think it must be that the stacking algorithms treated the ripply artifacts as "detail to be preserved" and therefore made them appear in the output wherever they appeared in any of the input files.

Does this sound right, or have I missed something?

--Rik

[LVF]

It is simply a fact that I was looking only at the in-focus areas while I was sharpening the photo. I over sharpened the out-of-focus areas because I was not looking at them.

I now know that it has nothing to do with stacking.

Leon